Death Row: Extreme Nothingness

Since the reinstitution of the death penalty in the late 1970s, 111 inmates nationally have been put to death after choosing to waive further appeals and fast-track their path to execution.

But are such life-or-death decisions, a stance adopted by Connecticut serial killer Michael Ross, as voluntary as they may appear?

Psychiatrist Terry Kupers believes such ``volunteerism'' is directly linked to the trend of states placing death row inmates in super-maximum-security prisons.

``Because 20 years ago death rows were not locked down, people were not in segregation on death row,'' said Kupers, a California-based psychiatrist who has toured numerous supermaxes, including Connecticut's Northern Correctional Institution. ``So they had a prison life, but it was a life where they could be out on the yard and have some meaningful activities.''

Kupers said that in a lot of states, including Connecticut, these inmates spend almost all of their time in their cells. ``Many prisoners on death rows come to the conclusion that life in this situation is not better than being dead,'' he said.

Many say it's appalling for death row inmates to complain about conditions. But extreme isolation is one of two factors that experts say has added to the so-called ``death row phenomenon'' -- a legal term that refers not just to the experience of highly restrictive confinement, but the lengthy, uncertain interval between sentence and execution.

As the last-minute legal maneuvering that resulted in the January postponement of the Ross execution made clear, it is a complex legal issue -- one being untangled at taxpayer expense -- involving whether extreme conditions in supermax prisons effectively coerce death row inmates into hastening their deaths. ``Their sentence is death. Their sentence is not solitary confinement. It's not psychological torture,'' lawyer Jim Nugent said.

The 111 death row ``volunteers'' represent 12 percent of all executions since 1977, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Citing federal data, Richard Dieter, executive director of the center, said that by the end of 2003, inmates had been residing on the nation's death rows an average of nearly 10 years.

Some U.S. Supreme Court justices have commented on the delay issue and its potential legal implications. ``Where a delay, measured in decades, reflects the state's own failure to comply with the Constitution's demands, the claim that time has rendered the execution inhuman is a particularly strong one,'' Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in a 1999 dissenting opinion.

Kupers said no one in the United States has had a death sentence set aside based upon a ``death row phenomenon'' argument. The issue has, however, become a key factor in international court rulings involving extraditions of suspects sought in capital cases in jurisdictions that have the death penalty and in death penalty cases arising from some Caribbean courts.

Dr. Stuart Grassian, a Massachusetts psychiatrist who has studied the effects of severe confinement, wrote about the phenomenon in a document that the Office of the Chief Public Defender had prepared in support of its petition to the Connecticut Supreme Court on behalf of Michael Ross.

``Over time,'' Grassian wrote, ``the very absence of stimulation causes whatever stimulation is available to become noxious and irritating. '' In modern times, medical literature about extreme sensory deprivation has been spurred by concern over conditions experienced by prisoners of war and by political prisoners in communist countries.

Grassian declined to comment on the Ross case, citing his continued involvement with it. In the document supporting the Ross petition, he wrote that while he had not interviewed Ross or toured death row, ``there is ample evidence to suggest that Mr. Ross' suicidal despair was a direct result of his conditions of confinement and what he perceives to be his desperate legal situation.''

``In that sense, moreover, his waiver is fundamentally coerced, and not voluntary,'' he said.

Built-In Isolation

For attorney Nugent, it boils down to this: Other inmates get transfer papers to Northern because of what they did inside another prison, while death row inmates live at the supermax facility by virtue of who they are.

Death row was housed at the high-security Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers and moved to Northern after the new prison opened in March 1995.

Nugent, who represented death row inmate Daniel Webb in an unsuccessful lawsuit arguing that housing death row at Northern violated the inmate's constitutional rights, said there was no justification for the move.

Men on death row are afforded more perks than Northern's general population, such as television and access to a day room. But they are still subject to the built-in isolation of a prison whose cells measure 7 by 12 feet, a facility where window slits barely offer a view.